1 . As a kid, Pamela Akuku spent her weekends exploring the National Museums of Kenya, following along with her mom who worked there. Akuku became fascinated with the researchers. She saw them using various equipment and researching the fossils carefully. “But I didn’t know what they were doing at the time,” she says. “I kept asking my mom about it.”

Akuku’s mom saw her daughter’s curiosity and signed her up for the museum’s Young Researchers Club. Akuku soon took part in mock excavations (模拟挖掘) and reconstructed bones. “I enjoyed reading and puzzles,” says Akuku. “And this was a mixture of the two.”

The museum experiences helped inspire her career as an archeologist. After her four years in university, she was sure that she wanted to study archaeology. She did her master’s in South Africa and majored in zooarchaeology (动物考古学). She is now at the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution in Tarragona, Spain. There, she studies how ancient humans modified (改良) animal bones. Her research is helping to reveal more about where early humans lived. She’s currently studying the remains from Tanzania’s Olduvai Gorge, where researchers previously discovered stone tools and evidence of early human ancestors going back as far as 2 million years.

Akuku gives some advice to people who want to do her job. “Be prepared to come across hard conditions. Working in this field is challenging. You have to work twice as hard just to be recognized,” Akuku said. But she has learned to deal with it. Now she always tells everyone the efforts are worthy.

Instead of starting a career in big cities, more and more university     1    (graduate) choose to return to their hometown. Li Dan is one of them. The girl,     2    (bear) in a small village in Southwest China, decided to stay with her family and friends after getting her degree at university.

In the strong support from national policies that aim to eliminate poverty, she started her own fruit growing business. Taking advantage     3     new technology and the Internet, she     4    (expand) her business to include agritourism over the last several years, creating more than 50 new jobs for the people in her village.     5     (live) in the hometown offers is a strong support network. More     6    (important), this network is also     7     good one for getting new agribusinesses up and running quite quickly. Thus, it is no surprise that more and more young people are now attracted to life in the country,     8     they can fulfill personal goals and contribute to     9    (they) local communities rather than just being white-collar professionals in big cities. “It is the hard work and your devotion     10     make a decent life, ” said Li Dan in an interview.

4 . Oliver, the CTO of a high-tech company, loved to participate in all conversations at the C-suite level, regardless of topic. He was often the first to raise his hand for a project, appeared to have infinite capacity to get high-quality work done, and offered to assist his peers and direct reports. Oliver seemed to be all-in; optimistic, energetic, supportive, and someone who constituted to everyone.

However, the more Oliver participated, the more others around him were slighted. Instead of sparking creatively in others, his ideas outshone everyone else’s. He consumed time speaking in meetings, exhausting the oxygen level in the room. Oliver felt pumped up by how many of his ideas had been deployed but frustrated by others’ lack of sufficient effort.

While the CEO appreciated Oliver’s yield, she recognized he had to change his approach to keep the rest of the team productive. In response, Oliver worked out a plan to help address his cooperation challenges using techniques many other executives had deployed.

When we over-participate, we believe that we're being helpful. However, “helpfulness” is defined by the recipient, not the giver. Instead of improving his relationships with colleagues, Oliver robbed them of fulfillment by furnishing masses of ideas. They felt discouraged, interrupted, and excluded. To fix the issue, Oliver learned the value of asking two specific questions before offering his own ideas: “What have you thought of?” and “What would be most helpful for you at this point?” Surveying others to understand what’s helpful illuminates better avenues for our contribution: directly through our ideas, through coaching colleagues to create their own, or by building on what someone else has generated.

6 . It came as no surprise that being interrupted by other people can have negative effects, like lowered productivity. But a new study shows an upside to these interruptions at work: increased feelings of belonging.

Researchers led by Harshad Puranik at the University of Illinois at Chicago looked at this common workplace phenomenon from two aspects. First, interruptions get in the way of completing assignments and require employees to repeatedly switch attention between tasks. That's where the negative effects of interruptions happen. However, beyond the task-based aspect, the group found that being interrupted by others has a social component to it — social interaction with the interrupter that can have a positive effect on the interrupted employees. "If the past year of social distancing and separation has shown us anything, it is that humans are social beings who have an inherent (内在的) need for interacting with others," said Puranik.

Building on previous research on work interruptions, the researchers surveyed 111 full-time employees twice a day once at lunch and once at the end of their workday for three weeks. While there were downsides to interruptions al work, like raising levels of stress and lowering people’s energy, there was an upside, the researchers found. Employees felt more like they belonged, which eventually allowed them to get more pleasure from their work routines.

The study found something else on top of this. The social aspect of work interruptions also weakened the negative impact that the switching of tasks during interruptions had on employees job satisfaction. This means that, intend of the negative experience, being interrupted at work can be "a net positive for the well-being of employees, "according to Puranik. Therefore, the researchers urge managers to better manage rather than completely prohibit work interruptions.

9 . With my degree in education and an internship (实习)   in a high school under my belt, I felt ready for my first real job teaching fourth graders. I prepared clear lesson ______ and plans. I broke down ______ ideas into concepts kids at this level could understand. Then I got into the classroom, and it all ______. “Why isn’t this working?” I thought at the end of another ______ day.

Marcia seemed to have all the time in the world — not just for singing, but for each child. When one ______ looked a bit lost, she walked over to the student’s desk and dropped to her knees to give up-close attention.

I couldn’t ______ to put some of the things I’d learned into practice. It wasn’t easy at first to ______ my lesson plans. But I discovered I enjoyed walking from desk to desk, talking to my students one-on-one, getting to know them as ______.